Born on February 11, 1941, in Canton, Georgia, Sonny Landham is a descendant of the Cherokee and Seminole Nations and best known to most of us as Big Bear, one of the main villains in the 1982 mega hit movie “48 Hours,” starring Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. Most recently, he is making news as an aspirant to the U.S. Senate representing Kentucky. Sonny currently lives in Ashland, Kentucky, with his wife and three children.
While working the oil fields in and around Los Angeles, California, Sonny met the major influence in his life, Mr. Carroll R.B. Righter, the world’s foremost astrologer. Carroll did Sonny’s astrological chart, and insisted that Sonny study acting, Landham studied at the famed Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, receiving training in the theater of arts, and performing in plays on the main stage. Sally Struthers, well-known actress was one of his classmates and he pursued further acting education with renowned acting coach’s Bob Paris and later with Frank Casaro and Sal Dano
Twenty years later, Sonny was an overnight sensation in “48 Hours,” also having featured roles in Predator, Fleshburn, Action Jackson, Firewalker, and many other movie and TV acting roles. An accomplished actor, it was his powerful physique, booming voice, and Native American look that brought him to the attention of one of Hollywood’s all-time great directors, Walter Hill. Sonny is also known as a filmmaker, having produced, written, and directed many films. In addition, he is a published author, the title of his book is, “Total Man.”
Legal battles involving Landham’s ex-wife turned his life upside down and he has fought long and hard in attempting to make things right and retrieve his children, his reputation, and compensation for all he was put through. This developed into a quest to change laws and becoming involved at a higher legal level. In 2003, Landham ran in the Republican Party primary election for the post of Governor of Kentucky, hoping to repeat the success of his Predator cast members and friends Jesse Ventura, who became Governor of Minnesota, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, current Governor of California. Although unsuccessful in gaining the party’s nomination, he ran briefly as an independent candidate, withdrawing and endorsing the Republican slate. On June 25, 2008, Landham announced his candidacy for the U. S. senate seat on the Libertarian line, the seat is currently held by Republican Mitch McConnell.
His decision to run for the Senate sparked my interest and I contacted Sonny as he was dashing off to be a guest on a late-night program. We set the appointment for the following morning and I was pleased that when we did get together, he provided me with his undivided attention. Sharing his thoughts on politics, the country’s state of affairs, and his relationship with boxing, we had a very pleasant conversation, lots of laughs, and still managed to broach some very serious subjects.
DH: What was your appointment about last night?
I was on Fox’s Red Eye last night.
DH: How did that go?
It went all right. It’s kind of hard to do a show, because I was at an ABC studio, so I had no live feed monitor to see what was happening and just sitting there talking through the earpiece. It’s a little rough to do it that way, you know if you see a monitor you see what’s happening. It went all right, it’s more of a ha ha venue than a serious venue.
DH: So you didn’t broach any serious issues then?
Well this came on at 3 AM Eastern time. It is midnight in California, so it’s a little on the verge of Comedy Central, something like that. It was fun to do, I enjoyed doing it and basically, I kept it light.
DH: I got to tell you, I saw you on the news throwing your hat in the ring, so to speak, for the U.S. Senate and I said to myself, “I know this guy.” Upon researching your name, I recognized “48 Hours” and a few other of your acting credits and was eager to make contact. Your bio said that you trained at the Pasadena Playhouse, is that correct?
Yes I did. I loved Pasadena, I was back there in the days when Al McCleery was around, this was in 1964, 1965, when they had to shut the doors because of tax problems. Things change…you know Pasadena used to be old wealth and there was a man by the name of “Gilmor Brown” who was the head of the theatre and he was very good at raising money. The old Pasadena Playhouse would put on plays and they would use stars, Celeste Holmes, Leon Ames, this type of actor.
They didn’t get people like Marlon Brando or Jack Lemmon; it was more of the well-known good actor, not mega stars. If it was a large cast, they would be supported by people from the school and the students also worked all the backstage jobs. It was an excellent training ground and Brown would go around raising money and the city would take pride in supporting all these people.
After the play, after Opening Night, some of the people out there would throw an Opening Night party and these were lavish parties and all the Pasadena people would come and I went to a couple of them. Pasadena was changing at the time…these people that had lived in Pasadena so long, were now the senior citizens, their children had moved away. This is when McCleery took over and the money that came through donations was not there.
In addition, The Pasadena Playhouse, if you had a Bachelor Degree, you got a Master’s Degree out there, but if you didn’t have a degree, you got a certificate of credit. You had Joseph Vince teaching fencing and he was an Olympic saber champion. I believe it was in the thirties when he taught the swashbucklers like, Errol Flynn and others how to look like they knew what they were doing. It was a great place that was aimed at creating actors, directors, and you walked out of there knowing the stage business. It’s a shame they did not teach you more about the film industry, but the money was gone and you couldn’t get enough funds from the students to support such a venture. Now they have AFI, but too late for the Playhouse, however. It was a beautiful place and I will always hold it dear in my heart.
They had so many major stars that came out of there, in my class there was, Sally Struthers from All in the Family fame, William Holden’s son was out there, Sidney Rome, Sidney had a pretty big career in Italy. Ken Globus was a fellow student, he was related to the producers, Menahem and Golan, and he did some producing in Europe. It was a nice group of people.
DH: Are you still acting?
If they call me with the money. If they say Sonny, show up here and here’s the money, I’d do it. But to stay out there now and chase acting roles, the people that are aligned with me for the same roles, would be the ones that they hand Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino. These are not the lead roles, cause when you get my age, they think that you’re here today but keep a black suit hanging in the wardrobe because you may be in the funeral home tomorrow. When you get to be my age in the movie business, it’s the Grandpa Vinny roles, and the old man roles. The action roles go to the younger guys. Wild action for me now is when I take two aspirins with my hot chocolate, and my bedtime is about 6 PM. Even if your still spry and jog 10 miles a day, they still think of you as the old man. It’s really a young man’s business.
DH: Would you tell me a little about politics?
It’s different in politics, once you’re in; you can’t get them out with dynamite. That’s what’s wrong with our country today, it’s not the age, it is the way of thinking. People in Washington, Senators, they supposedly, have information that we don’t have; they are supposed to have the full scope. They are working on today’s problems and today’s problems should have been foreseen ten years ago and the solutions should have been put in the works then. It’s like building a road, people come out here a say, “Gee, we need this road” and they decide to build this road in 2008 and they build it with 2008 traffic as there criteria, then it takes two or three years to get it started, then it takes them ten years to build it, and 15 years later, there’s the road, or highway, and it was built for 2008 and you’re at 2020! So, they are not being far-sighted.
On this oil crises, the republicans were in the majority, with a republican President, and they didn’t see what was coming. That’s one point of view, the other point of view is that their votes were bought off, take McConnell, he says he’s the closest American Senator to George Bush in the Senate, yet he didn’t get the straight poop on the war in Iraq. We have killed and maimed our children in Iraq just to get all these big oil companies back to drilling in Iraq. Is that worth sacrificing our youth? Of course not.
The Government is our enemy and people have gone along voting party lines or listened to the dogma for so long, and they’re tired. The price of drilled oil in Saudi Arabia is about $2.00 per barrel and gas over there is about .45 cents per gallon. There are 400 billion barrels of oil that OPEC has on the shelf, we have an oil reserve and we are not putting this oil out. The speculators had, at best, about two dollars per barrel, so the real demon is our own government and OPEC. We can’t drill here and there, you know Alaska and such, the Green Party…the environmentalist are behind that, and who backs the Green Party?
You can’t have any movement without money. I traveled last Sunday with my family, down to Lexington, about 125 miles, so 250 miles round trip, and it cost me $150.00 for one day, including breakfast and lunch. Now to run a campaign in Kentucky, it costs about 35 or 40 thousand dollars just to travel the state. Add to that, phone bills, printed material and just basics run into a small fortune. I believe that the Green Party is backed by the oil companies, because they give us all this flack about you can’t drill here or there, you can’t build refineries. The result is that we have to rely on foreign oil because we can’t drill here. They don’t want to do it.
DH: Do you think you can affect a change?
I would be one person out of 535 people in Congress, that’s the house and the Senate. What would I do? The only thing that I can do is go up there, because I’ll have well over 530 people hating me when I go in there and attempt to make some changes, both Democrats and Republicans will be unhappy with me because I will have a seat that they want. But you see how I can get the press, and one thing I can do is be before the camera every day, being the voice for the people.
We will soon have our position paper finished and published on lowering the cost of oil and I am very supportive of my friend and fellow politician, Governor Schwarzenegger on the idea that hydrogen is one of the top replacements for oil. That may be the major source of getting it developed. In the meantime, we call it “switch and drill,” we are going to have to drill while we develop alternatives; we will have to put up some refineries. We must disallow export of any American oil, keeping it here and it must be it must be put out at less than $40.00 per barrel.
DH: I’ve gotten away a little bit, I appreciated all that you’ve shared, however, I have to get into boxing, because that’s what RSR is about. Tell me who is your favorite boxer?
My favorite boxer is Mickey Rourke, the actor. (laughs)
DH: Beside Mickey, how did you become a fan?
Mickey is a good friend of mine and I love Mickey and support him in all his endeavors. First off, my father was a fight fan and when I was coming along there was only radio and I cannot remember when I did not listen to the Gillette’s Friday Night Fights. The stars then were Willie Pep, Sandy Sadler, the bolo puncher Kid Gavilan. In fact I met Gavilan with Muhammad Ali in New York and oh my goodness I was so excited, I was more excited about meeting him than anything.
DH: Sure, because you grew up hearing his fights.
Exactly. I heard all those fights on the radio and the first fight that I ever got to see on television was Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott. I was excited, I had heard about Joe Louis, but I can remember when Ruby Goldstein was refereeing the fight between Ezzard Charles and Marciano, and Charles hits him with a left, a left, another left, it’s another right, it’s a left. It’s a left. There’s a straight right to the jaw, Marciano keeps coming in, Marciano is bleeding profusely from the nose, it’s hanging on the side of his face, he’s down, he’s out. Goldstein steps in to stop the fight, he’s down, he’s out! And still the World’s Heavyweight Champion, Rocky Marciano.
DH: It was pretty exciting wasn’t it?
Oh yes, and you’re hearing it. Then we went through a period there where Floyd Patterson came in, he was such a nice man. He had such a paper-thin jaw; I think it was made in China. You could look at him and he went down. I’ll never forget the first pay fight I saw on the screen was the Ingemar Johansson-Patterson fight, when Patterson knocked Johansson out and boom!
Over time we’ve gotten to see so many fights, in fact a friend of mine, Craig Glazer, has owned the name “Champions Forever,” and he has the only film out there where Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, George Foreman, and Larry Holmes, were all together. This film is still out on DVD and you had Reggie Jackson, great baseball star, doing the interviewing. They did a whole production and Craig also did the “Latin Champions Forever.” That is out there too and Craig has now written a book on his life called “The King of Sting.” It just came out about a week to 10 days ago and we had Sal Dano who was an acting coach in Hollywood and Sal, every time there was a big fight, we would all chip in and watch the fights together. My interest in boxing goes a long way; there have been some great fights in our lifetime.
DH: Did you consider being a fighter yourself?
I always wanted to, that was my thing…to be a boxer. I was raised in a town called Rome, Georgia, and they didn’t have Golden Gloves and gyms like they have in the larger cities. I did have a speed bag and heavy bag set up and that was what I wanted to do. I went in the Army and when I was in Korea, I went out for the boxing team for Special Services, then after the service, Dundee Brown had a gym down in Venice, California, back in the 80’s, and I used to go work out a bit and talk to Dundee and one day I was in the gym and Dundee goes: “Sonny, Sonny, come over here, I gotta show you something. Look it here, you see that guy.” Then he pointed to this big white guy and said: “That’s my retirement, that guy there is gonna change my life.” So he rang the bell and out comes this kid that was probably a light, light heavyweight or a heavy middleweight that was going to spar with Dundee’s Great White Hope,” Dundee’s retirement, his annuity. Well, this kid steps in there, bam, bam, bam, bam, he was hitting Dundee’s man with everything but the kitchen sink and this “White Hope” was walking back on his heels and I looked at Dundee and said: “Dundee, are you sure this boy is your annuity, are you sure he’s your retirement?” Dundee said excitedly: “Yeah!” And I said: “Then you better get him out of the ring before that other kid kills him.”
DH: You didn’t see any retirement there, huh?
I thought his kid was gonna get retired right there. Then there was this kid from Kansas City that had a lot of troubles, Tommy Morrison. He was supposed to fight Mike Tyson and was the second coming. Well Sly Stallone had him in his movie and I met Tommy. Tommy had skinny legs, almost chicken legs, but still everyone was saying he was going to be the next world heavyweight champ and I watched and thought, OK the kids got a punch. We saw him win a couple of fights, I didn’t think he could take Tyson, but I figured he’d get a good payday.
Then out of Kansas City, Craig Glazer, Craig owns Stanford and Sons Restaurant and Comedy Club down in Kansas City. Tommy hung out there and was a good friend of Craig. I used to be in Kansas City a lot because Craig is like my brother and I observed Tommy’s training methods, and they left a lot to be desired. You can’t be hanging out in bars and chasing women when you’re getting ready for a fight. So Tommy broke with his manager and started out to do his own managing and he put that fight on in Kansas City, we were at ringside and Morrison is coming right at me and towards the opponent. The guy hit him and knocked him down, he went down on the floor and the referee was a friend of Tommy’s and the guy he was fighting was an unclaimed stiff from the morgue that had been there a couple of months.
DH: That’s really bad.
Yes, I think they did a make- up job on him to look like he was alive. But when he hit Tommy, boom, Tommy went down, he got up and hi eyes were glassy, you know that blank stare, nobody was home, not even a house there. I told Craig that Tommy was out. He got up and while they counted to eight we waited in line to go to the rest room, bought some hot dogs and cokes, went back to the bathroom, washed our hands and came back and sat down on our seats and they were still counting, they were only to about the count of 4 at that time.
DH: That was the “Long Count”
Yep, you know Tommy gets up, and I’m being facetious about this, but he had his hands up with the gloves up and the gloves were about even with his shoulders and he comes right at that guy with his face sticking out. The guy hit him a shot right between the eyes and Tommy goes down again. He was out, and Tyson was having his trouble at the time with the rape charge…can you imagine, the biggest gate of all time was on the line and they blew it?! It was like having the winning lottery ticket and they both stood there and burned it.
After that, there was no acting career for Tommy…he wasn’t an actor and he blew his boxing career. He tried to come back and do some stuff and the next thing you know he was reported to have aids. You know, what in the world…there are some truly sad stories in boxing.
DH: Believe me, I know that.
There were a lot of the never was that might be good in some old club, or they might have been good in their own hometown, but for the big time, they were just stiffs that wound up punchy. Like this Evander Holyfield thing, I mean how in the world, I mean with the Coca Cola and everything else and he’s being foreclosed on, this is tragic.
DH: Is there anything that you would like to say in closing?
Well Dan, I enjoyed it and I’d like you to include Craig Glazer and his book, “King of Sting” in the article. It is a great book and worth buying. And other than that, just give my regards to Hollywood, and I appreciated you taking the time to do this. I’d like talk to you again sometime about boxing, I enjoyed it.
